WotC Comparing EN World's Demographics to the D&D Community's

WotC released some figures this week. I thought it would be fun to compare them to the demographics of our own little community here on EN World for the same period (2019).

WotC uses a metric it refers to as 40,000,000 'D&D Fans', but that's not defined. For the purposes of this, I assume a fan is a person who has interacted directly with D&D in some way (played a game, bought a book, watch a stream, played a video game, etc.) A fan's a fan, however they interact with D&D!

For comparison, I'm using people who have interacted with EN World in some way -- and what we can measure is unique visitors. Obviously this isn't on the same scale (40M people is a LOT) but it doesn't matter too much for what we're doing here; they're both samples for conversation. So, let's start at the top!

• Short version: EN World skews younger, but more male than the overall D&D community.

WotC is looking at 40M fans, we're looking at 5.6M unique users (as opposed to overall visits, which numbers in the tens of millions). We get this data using Google Analytics, which provides a lot of anonymized demographic data. I can't identify any individual person with this; it merely shows the overall numbers. Our demographic data includes just under half of those 5.6M users; I don't know how WotC's data is derived. I know they do surveys from time to time, but I don't know what percentage of those 40M fans fill out those forms.

As an aside - 40 million D&D fans is awesome! We're definitely living in a golden age of tabletop gaming, and as the market leader, WotC is the entity most responsible for bringing in new gamers. Well, maybe Critical Role is, but they're playing D&D!

Age

So, the controversial data that everybody on Twitter is talking about -- the age groups. Google Analytics breaks it down a little differently to WotC's figures, so here's what we have. GA doesn't give stats on people under 18 years of age. The figures below are those GA has data on for EN World -- obviously that's only about half of overall users.

Age​	Numbers​	Percentage​
18-24	592,401 users	24.58%
25-34	1,309,373 users	54.33%
35-44	330,755 users	13.46%
45-54	138,372 users	5.74%
55-64	26,689 users	1.11%
65+	12,631 users	0.52%

As you can see, the figures aren't as evenly distributed as WotC's. There's a significant number of 25-34 year-olds, and a higher number of 18-24 year-olds. Also, it shows people above the age of 45, who don't appear in WotC's stats.

• We show a slightly higher percentage of people 34 or under (79% compared to WotC's measure of 74%) although we're not measuring people under 18, which would skew it younger if we were.
• 26% of WotC's audience is over 25, while only 20% of EN World's is.
• 7.37% of EN World's audience is over 45.
• Under 18s are not included in the stats.
• EN World skews younger than the D&D community overall.

For comparison, here are WotC's figures.

I've turned them into a quick and dirty bar graph. The number of players increases slowly from 8 up until age 35, peaking at ages 30-34, and then it starts to drop off sharply. That's the same age that the drop-off on EN World's readership takes place, too. Seems about 30 is peak age.

And here are those same figures in absolute numbers -- 10% of 40,000,000 people is a LOT of people!

Age​	Percentage​	Numbers​
8-12	12%	4.8 million
13-17	13%	5.2 million
18-24	15%	6 million
25-29	15%	6 million
30-34	19%	7.6 million
35-39	15%	6 million
40-45	11%	4.4 million

Gender

The gender demographics here skew much more male than WotC's stats do. Google Analytics shows male and female (it doesn't track non-binary people) and reports on under half of overall users (2.3M out of 5.6M total).

Of those, it reports 85.56% male, 14.44% female. It doesn't provide data on non-binary visitors.

Geography

WotC's report shows that Europe is growing for them. As a European (at least geographically!) that's heartwarming news for me. So here's some figures on EN World's geographical distribution.

As you can see, it skews primarily English-speaking heavily, which is expected for an English-language community.

United States	3,376,839 users	59.14%
United Kingdom (yay!)	478,217 users	8.38%
Canada	411,179 users	7.2%
Australia	198,922 users	3.48%
Brazil	125,682 users	2.2%
Germany	109,248 users	1.91%
Italy	95,682 users	1.68%
Netherlands	74,139 users	1.3%
Sweden	51,479 users	0.9%
Spain	47,096 users	0.82%

The list goes on for pages, but we're under 1% now.

The average EN World reader is male, American, between 25-34.

 

[noko]

Ironically, one of the page ads is from AARP. I'm only 52.

The real skew is "do people of certain ages use web forums?" Although includes my own bias. Do people came here for the forums or the news?

I'm here chiefly to nose through the forums. At 56, I'm not exactly looking to drop more cash or attend conventions.

 

[Morrus]

Added in this graph. I've turned them into a quick and dirty bar graph. The the number of players increases slowly from 8 up until age 35, peaking at ages 30-34, and then it starts to drop off sharply.

 

[Morrus]

I would suspect that grognards (not even sure what that means exactly) are under-represented in both sets of statistics. I would suspect many would be playing OSR based RPGs (Pathfinder, DCC, Castles and Crusades, or other), so would not show up in WotC numbers.

That's not under-represented, that's accurately represented. WotC is measuring D&D players, not the industry as a whole.

 

[noko]

I... couldn't disagree more. What's more, I think that is a dig on females, even if you didn't intend it to be so. I think this is exactly the sort of comment, though, that has made groups like this feel like it is hostile.

Imagine yourself as a woman who is into tabletop, reading that comment. Are you going to think "Oh, hey, this is a place that will welcome me", or are you going to think "This is a place that thinks I don't exist and will probably continue to do so whether I try to change their minds or not".

A woman who is into tabletop might wonder if what is coming next is the information that girls can't manage the math. But, let's give the benefit of the doubt here.

 

[ddaley]

That's not under-represented, that's accurately represented. WotC is measuring D&D players, not the industry as a whole.

WotC uses a metric it refers to as 40,000,000 'D&D Fans', but that's not defined.

Wait... their metric wasn't defined, but now it is? A D&D "fan" may not even be a player...

 

[Morrus]

Wait... their metric wasn't defined, but now it is? A D&D "fan" may not even be a player...

I'm not really sure what that means.

The differentiating term was "D&D" not "player". Pathfinder fans wouldn't count, D&D fans would.

I mean, unless they include Pathfinder fans in their stats, but that doesn't seem likely. I'm sure they're focused on the D&D brand.

 

[ddaley]

I'm not really sure what that means.

The differentiating term was "D&D" not "player". Pathfinder fans wouldn't count, D&D fans would.

I mean, unless they include Pathfinder fans in their stats, but that doesn't seem likely. I'm sure they're focused on the D&D brand.

My point is, you could be a grognard playing C&C but be a "fan" of D&D and not be included in their statistics... You can be a fan of multiple systems... even without playing all of them. Someone playing AD&D is obviously a D&D fan, but probably not included in the WotC numbers.

 

[ddaley]

I'm not really sure what that means.

The differentiating term was "D&D" not "player". Pathfinder fans wouldn't count, D&D fans would.

I mean, unless they include Pathfinder fans in their stats, but that doesn't seem likely. I'm sure they're focused on the D&D brand.

I have a stack of D&D material that was published before WotC even existed... if I were still playing from the material, would I not be a D&D fan?

As it turns out, I personally play 5e and got 3 kids into 5e who in turn got their friends into 5e... so, I am personally represented in both sets of statistics. I am just playing devil's advocate here.

 

[noko]

My own guesstimation would be that we've seen so many younger people arrive on the seen that those of us who've been around since 3E (or earlier) have just become massively outnumbered (even if our total numbers have possibly remained relatively stable these past edition years.) To my mind, this would go along with how the board game industry seems to have really blown up in the last 8+ years due to factors like the Tabletop web series popularizing it for the internet generations. Either by inspiring younger folks directly, or by inspiring us older folks who were already around for the most part to delve much deeper into it and start introducing our children and teens to the wider range of board gaming beyond Monopoly and Clue. And doing so over the past 8+ years could have allowed many of the children of gamers to age into becoming young adults themselves and pass on their gaming to new groups of friends, thus helping create the much larger pools that are now overshadowing us on the older range.

I think that may be right. My players are mostly in their early to mid-thirties, except myself and my older brother. None of us use virtual tabletops or join in with community-based gaming. My kids bought me the 5e starter set because they had fond memories of playing with me as children and here we are now a good five years later playing weekly games.

 

[Morrus]

My point is, you could be a grognard playing C&C but be a "fan" of D&D and not be included in their statistics... You can be a fan of multiple systems... even without playing all of them. Someone playing AD&D is obviously a D&D fan, but probably not included in the WotC numbers.

Well, like I said earlier, these things are samples, not censuses. I don't know what their market research data collection methods are, but standard market research techniques of the general population for sampling purposes would easily take those into account.